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Sir Thomas More
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Message 1.
Posted by miss elizabeth (U10895934) on Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
Just finished reading 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel (recommended).However, I came away with the impression that Cromwell wasn't a bad sort, really, but More wasn't very nice at all!
I always thought More was one of the 'good guys'. But was he? -
Message 2
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
I'm pretty sure he had a few people executed for heresy.
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Message 3
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
As far as I'm aware, More had only 6 people burned for heresy, an almost non-existant number compared to the 300 burned under Mary Tudor.
There were also allegations from John Knox that More personally tortured and whipped those he interrogated for heresy. But More always strongly refuted the accusations, swearing by God that he did not. Whether one likes or dislikes More, I don't think he was the type of man who would falsely invoke the name of God. -
Message 4
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 24th March 2010
Heavens, why didn't I check that when I posted it yesterday?
It was John Foxe, not John Knox. -
Message 5
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Wednesday, 24th March 2010
I recall hearing that there was an incident when More took a prospective son-in-law (was it Richard Rich?) into the bedroom of his daughters and, while they were sleeping, lifted their nightdresses.
Six individuals burned at the stake is quite enough for me to decide on what I think of Sir Thomas More. One would have been too many.
'A Man for All Seasons' appears to have been a propaganda exercise, albeit perhaps unknowingly so. -
Message 6
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 24th March 2010
"Six individuals burned at the stake is quite enough for me to decide on what I think of Sir Thomas More. One would have been too many."
Yes indeed but what we think of the practice is irrelevant. More was employed by the State not the RC church and burning at the stake was the traditional form of punishment for women found guilty of treason (men were hanged, drawn & quartered), for heresy and for witchcraft. It remained the law in the UK up until 1790 when parliament passed an act to outlaw the punishment. The last person to be burned was one Catherine Murphy found guilty of counterfeiting in London in 1789, but, at least, this time they hanged the poor women first. A small consession and improvement, I suppose. -
Message 7
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Friday, 26th March 2010
I always thought More was one of the "good guys". But was he?
Do "good guys" ever really exist, welshwitch?
That great satirist, Jonathan Swift, who, like Thomas More, was so caustic, so clinical, so sceptical, so superior and so cruel, includes TM (in Gulliver's Travels) among the six greatest defenders of liberty of all time. Mind you, we should beware always of unreliable narrators, especially narrators who in the end go mad! Swift wrote elsewhere that More was "the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced".
What then are we to make of these accusations of torture and abuse? Was the sainted More, with his hair-shirt, his bloodied scourge and his misogyny (apart from his devotion to clever daughters) indeed some kind of sado-masochist? Was the witty, "sweet" friend of Erasmus actually a fanatical pervert, some kind of intellectual Catholic Richard Topcliffe? I don't think so!
More was undoubtedly dogged and undaunted in his war against heretics - but heretics for TM meant *anarchists* - troublemakers (a mild term) who with their "foolish frantic books" were hell-bent on wrecking God's ordered world and bringing chaos and destruction to all Christendom. They'd already made a good start in Germany.
More certainly admitted that he had imprisoned a renegade priest - one George Gonstantine who "trafficked in heretical books" - in the porter's lodge of his house at Chelsea. He actually joked about this: when Constantine escaped from the stocks in which he had been secured, More instructed a servant to mend the wooden "frame of torture" in case the man tried to get back in again. And when he was informed that the London heretic community was jubilant over Constantine's escape, More wrote "neuer wyll I for my part be so vnresonable, as to be angry wyth any man that ryseth if he can, whan he fyndeth hym selfe that he sytteth not at hys ease."
Constantine's imprisonment is one of many reports of TM's behaviour as the intrepid and ruthless "hunter of heretics". As ID has already pointed out, it is from that superb piece of Protestant propaganda, John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and other post-Reformation sources that we learn that More apparently enjoyed tying dissidents to a tree (the mulberry bush?) and whipping them. We read also that he watched intently as "newe men" were racked in the Tower and that he was personally responsible for the burning of several of the "brethren" in Smithfield. Foxe stoutly accused More of cruelty to every heretic entrusted to his care. And stories of a similar nature were current even in More's lifetime - Cromwell made sure of that - but More, for whom, as we know, the taking of an oath was no small matter - denied them forcefully. Yes, he imprisoned heretics in his house - "thyr sure kepynge" he called it - but he utterly rejected claims of torture and whipping. There were only two occasions, he said, when he had ordered a beating - a blaspheming child had been caned (More usually only chastised his own children with "peacock feathers") and a former inmate of Bedlam who "practised many madde toyes and tryfles" had been subjected to punishment "with roddys until he waxed wery". This "madman" had delighted in behaving very badly in church: he would wait until the solemn moment at Mass when the priest elevated the host and then creep behind the kneeling women and, with gleeful whoops, lift the ladies' gowns over their heads!
But Richard Marius' comment - "His methods were not gentle" - must also be noted. Marius continues:
"Modern scholars have taken More solidly at his word. Yet in their zeal to absolve him of these old canards, they have forgotten that he must have been a terrifying antagonist to helpless men submitted to an inquisition before him, since he had the power to send them to the stake."
SST. -
Message 8
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 26th March 2010
As ever, a thoroughly entertaining post Temp!
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Message 9
Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Friday, 26th March 2010
Very well said Temperance, such a many layered personality, do you have any suggestions for further More reading which delves into his character a little more than usual, by the way I am just starting on "Blood Royal" by VB
Gran -
Message 10
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Friday, 26th March 2010
Hi Gran,
I've enjoyed the following:
A Daughter's Love - John Guy
The Life of Thomas More - Peter Ackroyd
Thomas More - Richard Marius
The Ackroyd and Marius biographies are superb!
SST. -
Message 11
Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Saturday, 27th March 2010
Thank you Temperance, they are now in my reading list.
Gran -
Message 12
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Saturday, 27th March 2010
Having juggled four books at any one time for the last year, they change at monthly intervals and I have to take notes, I find sleeping hard. Only murders make me relax. I like the logic.
Sadly I fell over Geoffrey Archer's, "Paths to Glory" the other day and read it before, "Wolf Halt" although I make it a policy never to read any prize winning books - I don't obey orders. I have the final chapter of Mallory's death to read and find it hard to do. I've looked him up on the internet and have become almost concerned about climbing. I care what happens.
Over the years I've obviously read books I shouldn't, and have succumbed to the Richard and Judy Club, some where terrible and others quite good. It concerns me that Geoffrey Archer is such a good story teller. I read Jane Austen and Hugh Walpole at 14, compulsive reading and since then anything which has come to hand. I can tell a book I can read and enjoy from the first two pages. But I've now read Dan Brown too. There are books I must read and those I want to and yet...The Story Teller will always win. Who agrees with this and what makes a good story teller? -
Message 13
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Sunday, 28th March 2010
Archer is a good story teller; he makes his characters believable even if they are rotters, or perhaps because they are rotters. Couldn't say the same for Dan Brown but he then he is too violent for my taste. I was disappointed in Kate Mosse's 'Labyrinth' which I read only because I am interested in the history of the Cathars. Big mistake. 'Time slip' stories can be gripping. Barbara Erskine's Lady of Hay set in the time of King John, is one which I enjoyed.
But the Storyteller is born rather than taught, I think?
[Archer is a Jeffrey, Minette, just in case anyone looks him up.] -
Message 14
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 29th March 2010
Dan Brown is one of those writers one either loves or hates, personally I fall into the later category and find his books less than mediocre in every respect.
But I do enjoy Barbara Erskine too, silverjenny. The historical sections of her books are vivid, descriptive and very well researched, but she is a historian, I believe. Imo she is preferable to Sharon Penman, who tends to concentrate purely on the political aspects therefore her books are somewhat 2 dimensional. Erskine on the other hand is extremely discriptive on every aspect of her time frame, so much so that I find myself almost smelling the stench of the medieval world. -
Message 15
Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Monday, 29th March 2010
Favourites for me, up to now are Elizabeth Chadwicks "A Place Beyond Courage" and "The Greatest Knight" About John and his son William Marshall, from a real age of chivalry.
Gran
PS We seem to have strayed from TM a little!!! -
Message 16
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Monday, 29th March 2010
gran, Minette led us astray down a pretty side path!.
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Message 17
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 29th March 2010
Yet in their zeal to absolve him of these old canards, they have forgotten that he must have been a terrifying antagonist to helpless men submitted to an inquisition before him, since he had the power to send them to the stake.
An argument I have heard used to explain his subsequent "highly principled" and ultimately fatal stand-off with his king. Simply put, his invitation to perform a volte-face would have put him into a position whereby he would suddenly require political alliance with many of the same group he had actively persecuted, and he knew where that would lead. The guy was out manoeuvred, and knew it. That he "chose" to go out with dignity was tself a political compromise, one that had royal approval and by all accounts was of royal invention. It rescued his reputation, but some more adroit politics beforehand, and probably an equivalent appreciation of the virtue of compromise on his own part, would have rescued more.
Not one of my favourite people. Friendship with Erasmus does not Erasmus make. -
Message 18
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Tuesday, 30th March 2010
Simply put, his invitation to perform a volte-face would have put him into a position whereby he would suddenly require political alliance with many of the same group he had actively persecuted, and he knew where that would lead.
It would only have led where Henry decided it would lead. I think it is a mistake to attribute too much power to any of the reformers - even Cromwell. (I'm thinking of a similar situation with Cranmer in 1543 and Henry's (gleeful?) last minute decision then to save his Archbishop from Gardiner and the vengeful conservative crew.)None of the "new men" could have touched More if he had kept the King's goodwill. Norfolk, that worldly-wise Catholic, warned of this after TM appeared before the royal council in an interrogation that took place a few days before March 7th 1534 ( when Chapuys mentioned it in a letter to the Emperor). More answered his inquisitors - Cromwell, Audeley and Cranmer - so cleverly, displaying such confident, quiet, ironic superiority that, as Marius comments, "they sweated". Nevertheless, the worried Howard - who was also present - tried desperately to get his old friend to see reason, cautioning him in those now famous words: "By the Mass, Master More, it is perilous striving with princes. And therefore I would wish you somewhat to incline to the King's pleasure. For by God's body, Master More, the wrath of the Prince is death."
Not just the Prince - the wrath of Anne Boleyn too. She was the only "reformer" who had any real influence with Henry and surely the only one whom More really had to fear. In the spring and early summer of 1534 - before she lost in July of that year the child (probably a boy) she was carrying - Boleyn's power was still immense. More's "remarkable concession" - for he *had* been willing to compromise - over the divorce and succession was not enough. His letter to Cromwell of March 5th 1534 and his later declaration at Lambeth (April 12th) did not satisfy either Anne or Henry. He wanted More's total surrender; she, brutal and effective politician as she was, wanted his death.
But I think it is true to say that More had had enough. The world had changed and he was happy to "go with dignity". Evidence suggests that he was already a very sick man when he entered the Tower: Margaret Roper speaks of her father's ill health - terrible pains in the chest and cramps in his legs at night that tend to confirm the supposition that he had a bad heart and the circulation problems that go with some forms of heart disease. She also said he suffered from "the stone" - an excruciatingly painful condition. There is also a telling remark which More made to his daughter just after his imprisonment:
"I believe, Meg, that they that have put me here think that they have done me a high displeasure. But I assure thee on my faith, my own good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and you that be my children, whom I account the chief part of my charge, I would not have failed long before this to have closed myself in as strait a room and a straiter too."
Perhaps assisted suicide and martyrdom - courtesy of the King's executioner - with the whole (nearly) of Christendom looking on and applauding - was not such a bad option.
SST.
PS Cranmer, with what Diarmaid MacCulloch calls "a revealing combination of naivety and pastoral concern", was actually all for accepting More (and Fisher's) compromise: he advocated taking up their suggestion that they swear merely to the main text of the Act of Succession, not to its explanatory preamble with the condemnation of the Bishop of Rome and of the King's first marriage. MacCulloch goes on: "Henry gave this kindly meant but unworldly advice short shrift and soon More and Fisher were in the Tower." It wasn't the jackals More had to fear: it was the lion. -
Message 19
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 30th March 2010
I agree with you, Temperance.
More had a huge advantage over Cranmer and company, some (few) of whom could match him for innate intelligence and political nous - two traits that in Henry's (and Mary's) time meant diddleysquat in terms of political or even actual survival in any case. His main advantage was that, unlike them, he had never had to go out on a theological limb, nor had ever seen even any reason to. While none of them could ever be sure what fate awaited them in the Tudor version of political reality, something which could change ultimately in character overnight, More knew that the rest were condemned to second-guessing themselves; even the king was not immune. For just sticking to his theological guns he must, in comparison, have seemed a superior being, even to his most implacable enemies. Anne was astute enough to realise that he had to be taken out of the picture permanently, but too short-sighted to think the full fall-out of that policy through.
But then the alternative was no better. Cranmer for example was was an admired theologian, politically very savvy and no stranger to tough personal sacrifice on both these grounds. Yet while always trying to weigh up the outcome of the policies he was told to endorse or advocated himself over quite a long career in Tudor terms, ended up a Lutheran Anglican Catholic recanting recantations of recantation.
Intelligence had no natural home in the Tudor court. More seems to have copped that at a crucial stage and made the only intelligent decision left to one in the circumstances. The alternative, as I said, was joining ranks with the second-guessers (his theological opponents in most cases) and compared to such a prospect for the remainder of his life execution must have stood out as a perfect alternative.
Especially, as you say, since he seems convinced he was due to meet his maker rather sharpish in any case. -
Message 20
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Wednesday, 31st March 2010
Hello Temperance and Nordmann,
Great messages!
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 21
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 31st March 2010
"By the Mass, Master More, it is perilous striving with princes. And therefore I would wish you somewhat to incline to the King's pleasure. For by God's body, Master More, the wrath of the Prince is death."
Wise and practical advice indeed, as that other "sainted" one to incur a kings wrath found, Thomas Beckett. -
Message 22
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Wednesday, 31st March 2010
Dear ID,
You might be interested to read this from Chapter Two of the Ackroyd biography:
"It was customary to give a single name to the baptised child and More's parents chose one which was as familiar to them as to every other Londoner. More's maternal grandfather had the same name, but it was also the defining name of an urban cult. Thomas Becket was still the great saint of the city, the martyr and subsequent worker of miracles. He had been born just twenty yards from More's own house in Milk Street, near the corner of Ironmonger Lane and Cheapside, and it is a striking coincidence that these two Catholic Londoners - both martyred and canonised - should have been, some centuries apart, almost nextdoor neighbours."
More, incidentally, was actually *born* in Milk Street. If you walk down that narrow thoroughfare today, between the banks and the companies which have their home in the "City", you will see a small statue of the Virgin lodged about thirty feet above the pavement.
SST. -
Message 23
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 31st March 2010
Thanks for that Temp, fascinating. And how much would knowledge and, no doubt, admiration of Beckett have played in More's decisions, I wonder?
I'm in the middle of reading about Thomas Beckett at the moment, but I'm afraid I haven't found too much I can admire, beyond a somewhat foolish courage, in the man. Seems to me Beckett was more about preserving the church's power and influence it had gained under King Stephen than for any admirable "good works". -
Message 24
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 31st March 2010
Becket is almost the archetypal case of the "best mate" promoted in the firm to the directors post reserved for such rewards, but who then actually takes his new role seriously and starts screwing with the chairman's plans. A hard case to deal with, especially if the guy in question enjoys quite a lot of support and respect from your own employees. I imagine it wasn't the last time an "industrial accent" "unfortunately" rubbed such a guy out.
-
Message 25
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Thursday, 1st April 2010
The date chosen for More's execution - July 6th 1535 - was actually of huge significance; and the link with Thomas Becket would have been clear to all. Was the Chairperson of the newly formed Realm of England as Empire plc thereby sending a very clear warning to all other potentially uppity directors - and shareholders - of his company? This Henry was running the show and there was to be *no* opposition to any of his plans.
6th July was St. Thomas's Eve, or the Eve of the Feast of the Translation of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, one of the two yearly feasts of St. Thomas Becket. More himself realised that this day was looming, and he was well aware of its significance - both for himself and for his King. The day before he died - when he still did not know that the date of his execution had been fixed - More mentioned it in what was to be his last letter to his daughter Margaret. This communication was written in charcoal on a piece of cloth because all his writing materials had been removed:
"Tomorrowe ... is S. Thomas evin, and the vtas of Sainte Peter and therefore tomorrowe longe I to goe to God, it were a day very meete and conveniente for me..."
In claiming that he himself would opt to die on St. Thomas's Eve, that it would be a day "very meete and conveniente", More is surely placing his own refusal of the royal supremacy in the tradition of England's premier saint.
I wonder if Henry or Cromwell later regretted choosing this particular July day? Probably not. Saints after all no longer mattered and Henry, certainly since he had decided that he was to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, had come to detest the memory of Becket, whose cult represented the triumph of the Western Church over a King of England. His destruction in September 1538 of Becket's shrine was perhaps the most spectacular single piece of iconoclasm of the entire Reformation: indeed the desecration of the shrine of the "holy blisful martir" and the burning of his bones were the primary reasons stated for the promulgation of Henry VIII's excommunication three months later in December 1538.
SST.
PS Cranmer had to arrange for some hasty alterations to his general seal in 1534: the centre part of his seal, which had shown the martyrdom of Becket, was replaced by a depiction of the Crucifixion. Likewise in 1538 the Archbishop realised it might be wise to change the images on his prerogative seals - Becket's martyrdom now becomes the scourging of Christ. -
Message 26
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Monday, 5th April 2010
I rather think I've killed this thread stone dead, wittering on with my great long posts, but that said, can I add another one?
A friend has offered me a rather different slant on More this weekend, showing me what Derek Wilson has written about the man. In his book "In the Lion's Court", Wilson tells the fascinating interlocking stories of the six men - all curiously called Thomas - who played such an important part in the amazing events of the reign of Henry VIII. Two of those Thomases, of course, were Cromwell and More, about whom Mantel writes so brilliantly.
Having mentioned how the ascetic community of the Carthusians had a profound effect on the young TM, Wilson has some pretty devastating things to say. Forgive me if I quote at length, but these comments have given me pause for thought:
"The Carthusians attached special importance to silence, manual labour and the strict suppression of sexual desire. They were the last religious to maintain the severer forms of mortification such as self-flagellation. More loved dearly the holy brothers and sisters who remained true to the ideal life which he knew he could never attain, just as he was scathing of those who brought the monastic institution into disrepute by succumbing to wordly temptations. His later vitriolic attacks on Luther often centred on the German's marriage to a former nun (the heretic was "an open incestuous lecher, a plain limb of the devil, and a manifest messenger of hell") and they tell us more about the author's repressed sexuality than they do about the object of his hatred."
Oh dear.
Wilson considers that the later More (and the younger More too - he never according to DW really changed, except "to become further convinced of his core beliefs") was simply a bigot, a vicious fanatic, a man whose so-called piety led him into such *impious* actions as vulgar, usually scatological abuse (and yes, I give Wilson that - More's invective would make a sailor blush), lying, deceit and cruel persecution. He suggests that Erasmus, who "borrowed" Whittington's phrase "omnium horarum" (conventionally translated as the famous "man for all seasons", but which more accurately implies " a good companion at any time of the day"), although certainly one of the world's most brilliant correspondents, was perhaps sometimes tempted in his famous letters to resort to rather outrageous flattery of his friends. Of the Dutchman's comment that nature had never fashioned anything "gentler, sweeter and happier than the character of Thomas More", Wilson warns "we must be cautious of taking it at face value". Mmm. I'm pausing, but am not entirely convinced.
It would seem that Hilary Mantel has plumped for Wilson's assessment of More. But what of the enigmatic Cromwell? Was he the cool and clever intellectual, as played by the darkly brooding
Ian Frain in "The Tudors"? Robert Bolt's thoroughly unpleasant "dockside bully"? Or something quite different, as HM suggests?
SST. -
Message 27
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Wednesday, 7th April 2010
So much sentiment!
I'm only on a nodding aquantance with Thomas Beckett but he was a self-opinionated, power hungry thug. Perhaps he and Thomas More did have much in common. Both were learened, both took on kings and both believed that Jesus was on their side!
Beckett used and abused Henry II. A multi-millionarre he was Henry's "best friend" before he discovered the power of the Church and found God! He broke every promise he had made to Henry and then appeared to relish martyrdom and of course almost the destruction of the king he claimed to love. Suicide is a mortal sin. And yet Beckett appears to have encouraged his own death and was made a Saint. Not unlike Thomas More in so many ways.
I almost feel nervous talking to people who believe that Thomas More's burnings and tortures were "only of the times". My speech marks. I expect he did it all in a jovial manner. Sir Thomas More, the rich and loyal Lord Chamberlin to Henry VIII, was executed and was Sainted because, he prevented the King and Cromwell from killing the innocent? He lived up to Christ's teaching looking after the poor and dispossed? He clung to the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Such irony!!! Lol.
"The good men do, die with them. The bad they do lives on." So true of Torquimada, but never of the sainted More! A good life and a good death. What worries me is the lives of those he disposed of inbetween. Why are the lives and reputations of some, so very much more important than others? As a Humanist I don't understand. -
Message 28
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Thursday, 8th April 2010
"The good men do, die with them. The bad they do lives on." So true of Torquimada, but never of the sainted More!"
With respect, Minette, your reference to Torquemada is neither appropriate nor helpful. The Grand Inquisitor of Spain burnt over 2000 heretics and was so hated that he was afraid to travel unless he was accompanied by a bodyguard of 50 mounted men, plus 250 armed foot soldiers. Thomas More burnt 6 heretics, all of whom had a chance to recant, and who were judged as political offenders. Furthermore, as ID has pointed out, the only evidence we have of the "tortures" TM is alleged to have perpetrated comes from Protestant propaganda tracts.
ID has also said:
The fact remains that the burning of heretics was an accepted practice of the time, on both sides of the religious divide.
And you have responded:
I almost feel nervous talking to people who believed that Thomas More's burnings and tortures were "only of the times".
Again ID is making a good point. Burnings happened, and what we "think" of the practice is irrelevant. We should not view the past through C21st eyes - isn't that the trap the fledgeling historian so often falls into? The post-modern world recoils in horror from More's brand of moral absolutism, but the C16th world did not. Anyone who thinks he or she can write dispassionately about politics in Tudor England from either the superior vantage point of sophisticated unbelief or of liberal Anglican humanism runs the risk of belittling the subject and missing the point. You cannot attempt magisterially to cut the prime movers of these times down to size: Derek Wilson warned against this when I heard him speak last year at Hampton Court. In a brilliant seminar about Martin Luther he told us: "We must feel his passion because if we do not, we have not got close to the real man." We have to remember - and try to understand - *More's* passion too: those six unfortunate heretics were - to him - anarchists, wreckers, religious terrorists.
But I agree that More was no more a saint than the rest of us. (I actually prefer the Nelson Mandela definition rather than that of the Vatican: "A saint is just a sinner who keeps on trying.") And yes there was an awful irony in More's position. Thanks to Robert Bolt, TM is seen as "the clear strong note of individual conscience, the note of self, sounding against the authoritarian intolerance of the Early Modern State." That he was, but here comes the rub: More died in defense of an authoritarian intolerance much more powerful than a mere king's - even if that king was Henry VIII. More died believing in God, the autocratic authority of the Pope and the might of the Catholic Church.
It was absurd. But perhaps this driven, complex man was aware of that essential absurdity - even if only at a subconscious level. I've said on the other thread that we all hate what we most fear in ourselves. Was Thomas More - who as a young man had joined with Erasmus in contemptuous mockery of the corruption of the Catholic Church - was he repressing with all his might something in his psyche deeper and potentially more devastating and dangerous than his sexual urges? More a closet heretic? A man who welcomed death because he felt he deserved to die? Just a thought.
SST.
PS Sorry to be pedantic, but the quotation is: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Mark Antony was being ironic of course.
-
Message 29
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 8th April 2010
Well I think we can, at least, agree on Beckett Minette! And, as you say, there are some similarities with More.
But Beckett really was an enigma and a chameleon. The suave, diplomatic, luxury loving, educated, intelligent friend and chancellor of Henry II or the austere, stubborn, uncompromising, sharp tongued, fanatical Archbishop of Canterbury.
As Nordmann has said, he did inspire great loyalty in his followers but he also inspired much opposition within the church, particularly for his unwillingness to compromise and for his fondness for excommunicating those in opposition.
Imo, he would not have been considered for cannonisation if the monks had not found that he was wearing a hair shirt when they prepared his body for burial. I think there were also signs that he practiced daily scourging and suddenly everyone was calling him "matyr", flocking to his tomb and proclaiming various miracles performed. The monks must have made an absolute fortune fobbing off pig blood as Beckett's to the gullible! -
Message 30
Posted by Temperance (U13685519) on Tuesday, 13th April 2010
Dear Minette,
I don't think you've seen my Message 28 above yet. I hope you haven't, because it's badly written and poorly argued. Logic was never my strong point.
So I shall try again. You seem to suggest in your message that while More was Lord Chancellor of England heretics were subjected to a regime of torture and unjust death similar to that imposed on religious dissidents in Spain during Torquemada's time as Grand Inquisitor. Rather an unexpected argument, I must say, and surely an erroneous one.
If we accept that burning as a form of execution was "an accepted practice of the time" the numbers shouldn't really matter at all. Two thousand or six - who's counting? But numbers do tell us something: they are very important, as are the motives of the men who condemned the unfortunate victims to such a cruel and terrible death. More - whatever his sexual problems - was not a sadistic pervert: all the evidence suggests he did *not* torture heretics and that he only reluctantly approved the death sentence as an unpleasant but necessary punishment for *political* dissidence. Most sources seem to indicate that Torquemada on the other hand was a complete madman - hated and feared as such by his contemporaries. Why even the Holy Father himself tried to distance himself from the conduct of Torquemada, seeming to disapprove of what he euphemistically called the excessive "zeal" displayed by this, surely the most infamous of his Inquisitors.
More, however, as I've tried to explain, was genuinely appalled at what he saw as a very clear and present danger to the stability of the realm - and the King - he had sworn to defend. Herein lies the true irony. Because More was ultimately absolutely right. The stuff that was being smuggled into England was brilliant, liberating and potentially very, very dangerous.
I've been reading it all week - two books which, had they been discovered in my house in 1530, would have got me burnt: William Tyndale's New Testament and his "Obedience of a Christian Man". My copy of the NT, delivered in 2010 by Amazon, is in the original spelling, as published in 1526. It is nevertheless surprisingly easy to read and the prose style is wonderful. I couldn't put it down. This is the Word of God as read for the first time in England five hundred years ago. Dear Lord could this Tyndale write, and boy was he dangerous! As for his "Obedience of a Christian Man" - well it was absolutely revolutionary - you can trace the path from WT straight through to 1649!
I'm surprised Henry VIII didn't see that. Anne Boleyn gave him a copy of "Obedience" to read and he was mightily impressed with the thrust of Tyndale's argument which deduced from Scripture that a good Christian had an absolute duty of obedience to the King, not to the Pope. "This book is for me and all Kings" he is supposed to have declared. Very true, but for a book for all Parliamentarians too. Cromwell realised that, I suspect and so - ironically and tragically - did More.
But then did Henry give a damn for anything else but that could be of use to *him* at the time? Heretic or Catholic - did it matter? Probably not. You have to give the old devil his due: who else but Henry could be so even-handed in his dispensation of justice for the spiritually misguided? A particularly grotesque exercise in supposed balance came in 1540 when he executed three Protestants and three Catholics on the same day, presumably to "encourager les autres".
But that's another story.
SST. -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 17th May 2010
I've just finished "Wolf Hall" (second reading). The best historical novel I have ever read. Has any historical writer *ever* written a better chapter than Mantel's Part Six: "Supremacy" 1534?
Cromwell and More. As bad as each other? I just don't know, but isn't this superb?
"Audley reaches past him, opens a window. A torrent of birdsong crests on the edge of the sill and spills into the room, the liquid, fluent notes of the storm-thrush.
'I suppose he's writing an account of today,' he* says. 'And sending it out of the kingdom to be printed. Depend upon it, in the eyes of Europe we will be the fools and the oppressors, and he will be the poor victim with the better turn of phrase.'
Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He is the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell.'
Madame Mantel - you won't remember the lady with the tea-tree oil at Hampton Court, but she salutes you....
* Mantel's much criticised pronoun - dangling or not - always refers to Cromwell. -
Message 32
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Tuesday, 18th May 2010
Swift wrote elsewhere that More was "the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced".
Admirers of Robespierre probably said analogous things about him.
"Beware of a man with a belief". The ones who are ready to die for what they believe in are all too often ready to kill for it as well. -
Message 33
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
"Beware of a man with a belief."
The belief of course being in themselves and the absolute power of their own wills. These so called religious men of the Tudor age - for all their prodigious learning, their knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and their ability to dispute trifles until the cows came home - seem to have missed completely the simple message of the Gospels. Thy will be done my hat. Cranmer was perhaps an exception: he was painfully aware of his own inadequacies - that's probably why Henry was so fond of him. You can't help but warm to an Archbishop who honestly admits: "This is a matter on which prayer has not enlightened me."
Heaven protect us from the enlightened ones.
At least with H8 himself there was no phony pretence of humble submission to the will of a Higher Power. People - God included - knew where they were with Henry. I think my favourite HT quotation of all time is from the Maxwell Anderson script of "Anne of the Thousand Days":
"I'm the king of England. When I pray, God listens."
Don't know anything at all about Robespierre, but Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety" awaits me. Didn't Robespierre want to start a Cult of the Supreme Being? Shudder. -
Message 34
Posted by Squiddly Diddly (U4365170) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
Do "good guys" ever really exist, welshwitch? How about William Tyndale?
Incidentally, the 鶹Լ did a good dramatised documentary (which they really ought to repeat) on the More/Tyndale spat a few years ago, an excerpt from which can be found here:-
More (played by James Fox) doesn't seem to come out very well in this either. -
Message 35
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
How about William Tyndale?
Tyndale (who actually became a hero of mine after I read Brian Moynahan's superb biography "If God Spare My Life") was a thoroughly good egg. At least he seems to have been. But no doubt before long some clever historian or other will bring out a book which dishes the dirt on WT too and we'll all have to revise our opinion.
I should have made it clear it's the Tudor *politicians* whose hypocrisy irritates me so much - all those men of God and "devout" laymen who were more concerned with the high affairs of State - and their own egos - than loving their neighbours. True Christians - like Little Bilney - were rare indeed. Little Bilney was quite mad: he gave away his own food to the poor, laboured for "the desperates", was "a preacher to the prisoners and comfortless" and even ministered to the lepers. They burnt him, of course.
I do have to admit to a soft spot for Cardinal Wolsey though. You have to admire the chutzpah of the man: "Let the begrudgers behold us!"
Pope Leo X was a bit of a character too: he had his pet elephant painted by Raphael (life-size).
Many thanks for the link, Squiddly Diddly - didn't know about that documentary at all. Looks really good - what a shame there's only eight minutes of it available. -
Message 36
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
As Temperance claims to have already killed off this thread, perhaps no-one will blame me:
*
These were challenging and changing times and England coped with them through the efforts of the four Thomases, who served Henry VIII: and perhaps nothing emphasises the revolutionary and unstable nature of the times more than the fact that the only one of the four not to be executed cheated the executioner by dying before he could be taken to the block.
Thomas Wolsey had been both Archbishop and Chancellor in the Medieval tradition of Sudbury: and, like Richard II, Henry had become a teenager king. Then the shadow of civil war, the dynastic Wars of the Roses, continued to hang over the country; and this combining of religious and secular authority in one man, the King’s chief stay and support, was in line with Medieval wisdom- but also perhaps with Medieval inadequacies that were no longer acceptable .
The revolution of 1536 called for a clear division of spiritual/intellectual and material/secular, for the times demanded specialization of labour.
Cranmer had been grabbed from academia, where his life’s work had been dedicated to promoting a revolution in the intellectual capital of Christianity and putting it at the service of Humankind.
Cromwell on the other hand had practised many trades, including reputedly working as a banker in Italy, and he certainly seems to have a banker’s grasp of the material reality of assets and liabilities.
Cromwell’s crucial role in the revolution involved “freeing up” the ‘surplus capital’ of the Church in England. This confiscated wealth of the Church in England meant a significant transference of power to the English Crown and then to the supporters of the crown It meant what later ages might call a Keynesian injection of wealth, or a “quantitative easing” into the economy that helped to launch a new “national project”.
Cranmer’s role, on the other hand, was especially a legacy of broad-church theology and a magnificent English Prayer Book that was worded for inclusiveness and not exclusiveness.
But between the age of Wolsey and the age of Cromwell and Cranmer there was the transitional age of Thomas More.
Part-time monk, scholar, and lawyer brought into the service of State and Church, for monarchs were still crowned with sceptre and sword, More tried to bridge the secular and the spiritual in his own life: and, 350 years after his death, More was declared a saint supposedly for his defence of the powers of the Pope. That was a period of Roman Catholic revival in Britain which saw a new era of Church and Cathedral building, the appointment of new bishops, Archbishop, and even Cardinals, as well as the return of monasticism.
But it was more than just a ‘restoration’ of the old papacy, for the Pope was now credited with a new “infallibility”, much to the horror of Lord Acton who became famous for his dictum- “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE QUESTION
It is very difficult these days to detach the image of Sir Thomas More from the brilliant acting of Paul Schofield in both the stage and film versions of Robert Bolt’s “A Man For All Seasons”. It was a script that made faithful use of Will Roper’s book about the life of his father-in-law.
But to anyone, who has read the letters of John Steinbeck, it seems most likely that the play also drew heavily for its inspiration upon conversations between Steinbeck and Bolt in 1958, when the Steinbecks made a brief visit to England, and more crucially in 1959 when Robert Bolt found them a stone cottage that they rented down in land of Arthurian legend and Henrician Reformation.
Steinbeck need to get back in touch with Arthurian heroism and his writing project that summer owed much to his sense of guilt and shame that he, and just about everyone else, had allowed Arthur Miller to fight Macarthyism in the USA all on his own. Miller had brilliantly used the Salem witch-trials to show audiences a “truly American” precedent for shameful witch-hunts and Bolt/Schofield’s More shows the Cold War conflict between the artist/intellectual and the overwhelming force of the modern Superstate intent upon brainwashing.
In fact Thomas More lived in a very different age when the modern state was in its infancy, and needed all the skills of a nurseryman if it was not whither away and fail. And he died knowing, and acting upon the conviction that, in those turbulent times, for the greater common good, peace and stability was preferable to conflict and unpredictability.
It was a course that he was set upon as a teenager when his father called him back from Oxford University, city of the world, the universe and beyond, to study law in London.
As G.G. Coulton says no late Medieval King of England survived without the support of London, and for London the new wide world would be enough for the foreseeable future.
It was an age when new arts of navigation were making it possible to “ boldly go where no man had gone before”: and, once they had been there, they could supply information to cartographers, who could now define new spaces of land and ocean in accordance with a new scaffolding- the grid.
In much the same way a lawyer’s training and experience made it possible to refer precedented’ problems to an existing body of law, and unprecedented ones to fundamental principles with the High Court of Parliament passing new legislation as necessary.
But, possibly as the result of his abbreviated time at Oxford, More did not suffer from the malady of treating the foreigner as a foe, which Lord Acton said was so common in that age of Renaissance and Reformation. It was a quality that impressed the London merchants,who hired More to handle negotiations with foreign merchants both at home and abroad. And it was a visit to the booming ports of the Netherlands that inspired More to write his most famous book “Utopia”. Utopia being just one of many other strange lands, all inhabited by a common humanity.
It was this trip also that probably convinced Henry VIII, needing to negotiate with France, that such a man should be in his service: and the two men almost certainly collaborated on the small book accredited to the King that won him the title “Defender of the Faith”. It was written in response to the Lutheran challenge to the Church and the consequent destabilised state of Germany, soon to descend into Peasants’ Revolt and massacre.
And it was More's determination to search for the continued the unity of Christendom, even in these revolutionary times, that was to lead to his death and, three hundred and fifty years later to his being elevated to sainthood.
The historian A.L. Rowse, however, towed a fairly conventional English line for his own time in his 1979 introduction to a new edition of Will Roper’s book :
“A subject on which Roper lies low is More’s persecution of Protestants- of which indeed he was the leading spirit as Councillor and Lord Chancellor...More..personally searched the house of a friend in the City, John Petit, for Protestant books, and committed him to prison, where he shortly died before he could be charged. ‘An inoffensive leatherseller’, John Tewkesbury was burnt just before Christmas 1531- of whom More wrote, “there never was a wretch, I ween, better worthy.’ About the same time More sent James Bainham, a Middle Temple lawyer, to the Tower to be racked, in the hope of getting on the track of others of his persuasion. Forced to abjure his errors, he was subsequently burnt as a ‘lapsed heretic’ shortly before More ceased to be Chancellor.”
Professor A.F. Pollard had also showed More as less than saintly over seventy years before in his study “Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation”, published in the series “Heroes of the Reformation” (1905) , taking More to task over his critical comments about William Tyndale and his English Bible.
Tyndale had been condemned and burned abroad, which was none of More’s doing, but he did refer to his translations as “ a mischievous perversion of those writings intended to advance heretical opinions”.
No less an expert, on the other hand, than Pollard’s subject Cranmer largely approved of Tyndale’s translation, the first to use not just the inferior Vulgate version of the Bible, but also Greek and Hebrew. So Pollard goes on to say, with some acrimony, “Sir Thomas More had no objection to the truth being made known to the select few, but an attempt like Tyndale’s to bring it home to “the boy that driveth his plough” he regarded as “a design to depreciate the authority of the ordained priesthood and of the organised Church”. Pollard adds, however, that: “ More’s views in this matter were shared by Henry VIII and by most of his Bishops..”
THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF BOOKS
There is surely nothing exceptional about the fact that Thomas More as High Court Judge and then Lord Chancellor should take a leading role in discussions and pre-emptive action concerning the “Protestant terrorist” threat, as Rowse informs us that he did, if we accept that the threat may have been as real as the present threat from Islamic terrorism.
Moreover Pollard shows that his ideas were unexceptional views for the men who were facing the crisis of the age. Furthermore Cranmer’s largeness of intellectual scope was not easily contained within the limitations of his age, and his approval of Tyndale’s translation was not shared by those of a narrower understanding. Pollard, Coulton, and Rowse had the advantages, and the disadvantages, of looking back with hindsight, after centuries of intellectual growth, to find the lessons of History that were relevant for crises of their own age.
All three historians were products of what H.A.L. Fisher called “The Liberal Experiment” in volume three of his History of Europe published in 1935. It was the age when Western Civilization was feeling the full impact of the book revolution for Liberalism was inextricably bound with “liber” = a book.
More may have been "A Man For All Seasons" but he was surely along with that man who wished to "be of service" to his times in accordance with his own grasp of thruth. Cranmer too strove to be "of service", and blamed that compelling desire for a moment that betrayed his mission.
Cass -
Message 37
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Wow! So there is to be much more More. As a matter of interest did you just extemporise that or was it one you had prepared earlier?
Kind regards,
TP -
Message 38
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Twin Probe
I extrapolated it out of the project I wrote a few months ago entitled "Was Protestantism the Islamic Fundamentalism of another age?"
I started a thread.. But it did not "die the death", it was still born... It is probably down there still somewhere.
Cass -
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Twin Probe
Actually I tell a lie-- I forget. It was suppressed by our Host, with a final GRFBR from Id.
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Hi Cas
I won't ask.
TP -
Message 41
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Twin Probe
Good riddance etc
Cass -
Message 42
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
But Beckett really was an enigma and a chameleon. The suave, diplomatic, luxury loving, educated, intelligent friend and chancellor of Henry II or the austere, stubborn, uncompromising, sharp tongued, fanatical Archbishop of Canterbury.
It makes more sense if you look at his early life. The Richard Burton film omitted this, and so made things seem more mysterious than perhaps they really were.
1) From age ten (maybe younger) to about fifteen, Becket was educated at the Abbey of Merton. Afaik, there was no question of his actually becoming a monk, but presumably he lived under a regime not much different from the young novices. He may have rebelled against it after leaving, but the influence was still there, and probably resurfaced after his Consecration as Archbishop. Taking the boy out of the monastery did not take the monastery out of the boy.
2) After leaving Merton, he spent some years in the household of a minor baron, where he was trained in upper class accomplishments, and no doubt picked up the attitudes that went with them. In particular, this meant being ready to fight to the death in defence of your turf, not just the physical property but any privileges and immunities that went with. No baron would have tolerated another baron coming onto his manor and hanging a thief there - even if the thief was as guilty as h-ll. That was his right and his alone. As Archbishop, it would have come naturally to Thomas to take the same attitude about lay authorities trying to punish clerics.
I don't know how well informed Henry II was about his Chancellor's formative years, but if he did know about them, he clearly failed to realise their significance. -
Message 43
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Mikestone
I believe that the Richard Burton film was actually a screen version of an Anouilh play, and anyone who is familiar with Anouilh's work will immediately see its continuities. Whether works of pure fiction like "The Rehearsal", or his plays based upon historical characters like Antigone, Joan or Arc, Becket, and Robespierre, he makes a great use of artistic licence to turn the historical situations into vehicles for his own messages for contemporary France.. In Becket, for example, as far as I remember there are scenes with nationalistic English people resenting the foreign occupation by the French. Whether or not this happened in the eleventh century, it did during the German occupation of France. I was somewhat surprised just last month at the unusual vehemence with which my French mother-in-law spoke of just how terrible the Germans were as conquerors and occupiers, and she can still not bear to hear German spoken.
As for Becket I remember writing an essay at Uni in which I argued that the supposed miracle of his transformation was nothing of the sort. He understood that there are different roles in life and played both "jobs" to the highest standards. He even warned Henry not to appoint him, being aware that being the best Archbishop of Canterbury that he could be, he would inevitably come into conflict with the King- and he knew the King well enough to understand that this might well be a case of irresistible forces and immovable objects.
I believe that my interpretation was judged to be too psychological and introspective..
But I was very much aware at that time of having just undergone something of a similar transition myself-- though possibly the other way round.
Cass -
Message 44
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st July 2010
Furthermore- Richard Burton as anybody was still Richard Burton.. A great act and actor, but perhaps as misleading as a Becket as he was as a Henry VIII.
Burton was a rugby open-side-wing-forward back in the days of classic rugby- speed, fire, tenacity, etc.. But surely Henry VIII would have been at least a blind side wing-forward or number eight.. As for Becket, about ten years ago they examined some of the clerical garments that were alleged to have belonged to Becket and he seems to have been a giant- definitely therefore a massive second row.
Of course Becket's roots seem to have been in "Bec" in Normandy, and he might well have inherited those Scandinavan genes that produced, and produce, giants. This might well explain many things about:
(a) his friendship with Henry II who was smallish and stocky, and made up with his vitality and abundant energy what he lacked in sheer strength. It might have been an Asterisk and Obelisk situation, in which the King revelled in testing his own physical prowess against this giant. Are they not reputed to have enjoyed man to man wrestling bouts etc?
and (b) that final scene in which Becket refused to flee from those who came to "deal with" him, and who was so strong that his own monks in the cathedral chapter apparently could not drag him away when he just grabbed hold of a stone column and resisted their efforts to save him. Perhaps too the size of the man influenced the comings and goings of those knights, who may well have needed to "fortify themsleves" before coming back to slay him with a degree of violence that also may have seemed necessary..
He may have been a Holy man; but this was an age in which there were warrior bishops, and a wounded giant might have been stirred up to retaliate.
Cass -
Message 45
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Thursday, 22nd July 2010
I believe that the Richard Burton film was actually a screen version of an Anouilh play, and anyone who is familiar with Anouilh's work will immediately see its continuities. Whether works of pure fiction like "The Rehearsal", or his plays based upon historical characters like Antigone, Joan or Arc, Becket, and Robespierre, he makes a great use of artistic licence to turn the historical situations into vehicles for his own messages for contemporary France.. In Becket, for example, as far as I remember there are scenes with nationalistic English people resenting the foreign occupation by the French. Whether or not this happened in the eleventh century, it did during the German occupation of France.
Hense the nonsense about Becket being a "Saxon collaborator" which pops up during the film. -
Message 46
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 22nd July 2010
Mikestone
Exactly..
Cass -
Message 47
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 27th November 2011
Tas, the link I gave to this thread doesn't work - don't know why - so I've retrieved it from the depths for you!
Gosh, I did woffle on a fair bit, but so did others, mentioning no names!
Got to take a bit of a break from all this now, but I'll be back.
Best wishes,
SST. -
Message 48
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 27th November 2011
What a great thread and what a nice discussion! My complements to all the participants. I enjoyed it .
Tas
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